Dear agent of my dreams

by Cressida Downing

A submission letter can be a terrifying hurdle to overcome in the journey
towards possible publication, but there are some simple steps you can take to
make it less of a chore.

For this blog I’m going to focus on five very practical elements of a
submission. If you read this and think ‘surely no-one could make THAT sort
of mistake’ – I’ve seen many many cases of the following examples, and I’m not
alone.

The cliché is that poor authors and lunatics write great reams of
correspondence in green ink in hard to decipher hand-writing. Green ink
does have a certain reputation, but the basic rule is to write as elegantly as
you would for a job application. These days the vast majority type their
letters, so choose a clear font, make sure the font size is legible (12 point
ideally) and keep it concise.

If you are going to hand-write it – make sure you are legible. If I
have to handwrite something, my handwriting is so appalling that I’m better off
having my nine year-old write it, but an elegant hand will lend a certain
je-ne-sais-quoi to a submission.

3. Don’t forget your contact
details.

While agents like suspense as much as the next
person, they really haven’t got the time to try and track you down from such
clues as ‘living in a one-bedroom flat in North London with the last name
Smith’. I’ve done a version of this by putting up a website that I
thought was getting remarkably few (in fact no) hits, only to realise a month
later that I’d not put any contact details on at all.

4. Don’t forget to put your
submission in.

This doesn’t happen very often – but when it does, it’s a wasted
opportunity. A version of this is the letter that asks if the agent wants
to see more, without any more information than a paragraph in the letter
summing up the novel. Some agents will ask to see more, but a far larger
number simply won’t have time to chase that up, making it another wasted
chance.

5. You don’t need other
‘stuff’.

Nice as it is to see your photograph, get showered with glittery confetti,
be offered a lunch out, or see examples of origami – the publishing world
doesn’t tend to respond well to these kind of touches. Keep it simple –
your words really do need to speak for themselves.